


these little fragments

by Ellerigby13



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bruises, F/M, Frank is more broken than he will admit, Karen is more broken than Frank wants to admit, One Shot, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9348278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellerigby13/pseuds/Ellerigby13
Summary: Chasing leads leaves Karen a little bruised and bloodied.  Coincidentally, Frank needs a safe place to stay.  Needless to say, he's not happy about what happened to her face.  She's not so happy about him disappearing for the last six months.





	

He’s wasted more time lingering outside her apartment thinking about what he’s going to first say to her when she opens that door, than how long it would take for him to cross the hall, knock on it, and figure out something in those last ten seconds.

It’s never easy re-entering someone’s life after they tell you you’re dead to them, but Frank’s never done things the easy way.

Plus, he kind of needs a place to bunker down for the night, seeing as the hideout he  _ had _ been using just exploded, almost taking him with it.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, pushing off the door to the stairwell and starting across the checkered carpet, stops in front of her door, and gives a few brisk raps.  He’s scrambling for some line to open with-- _ Hey, Karen _ , or  _ I can explain _ , or  _ I’m sorry I wrecked your car right before I killed that backstabbing bastard right in front of you after you asked me not to _ .  Then the door cracks just enough for a sliver of light to peek through, and swings backward.

All the words he’d been preparing die from his mind in an instant.

“What in  _ fuck’s name _ happened to your face?”  He doesn’t mean for his voice to come out as loudly as it does, but Karen recoils all the same, then reaches out to grab his shirt and yank him into her apartment, hissing something at him about her neighbors.

There’s a great big bruise covering almost the entire left half of her face, blossoming like fat violets over the delicate patches of skin.  Her eye is nearly swollen shut, and it looks like someone’s done her the courtesy of splitting her lip open, too.  Frank’s knuckles are white from clenching his fists so hard.

“Frank, what are you doing here?” she asks softly, gingerly replacing the bag of frozen peas that had been on her face before he turned up.

“I was--” he falters, the anger bubbling up in his chest so rapidly he can barely keep himself from bursting with it “--was gonna ask you about stayin’ the night, but I…”  He doesn’t finish, and she doesn’t need him to.

“Yeah,” she says, as sharply as she can without agitating the gash in her lip.  His stomach churns with rage, with regret.  He wants to vomit, knowing that he’s wronged her with his absence, and should have repented it from the start.  And even with the battering she’s taken she doesn’t let up, turning her back on him to retrieve spare blankets from the hall closet and toss them haphazard onto the sofa.  “About how long do you think you’ll be here?”

He hears his heart thumping more loudly in his ears than he does her voice, echoing tiny in the back of his brain.  She repeats her question a few more times, frowning with the right half of her face, before he hears her again, and her hands are latched onto his biceps.

“Frank!”  And then he’s back on Earth, in his body, his palms aching from how hard he’s digging his fingernails into them.  He looks up at her, gut tight as he takes in the beating again.  “Are you okay?”

“Who did that?”  She swallows, running a hand through her hair and looking down at her shoes.  “Karen, who did that to you?”

“ _ No _ ,” she says, her eyebrows furrowing with confusion and anger.  “No, Frank, you don’t get to--you don’t get to do that.  You don’t get to just poke around after disappearing on me for  _ six months. _  After all that happened, you don’t  _ get _ to be concerned anymore.”

“Well, I fucking  _ AM _ !” he erupts, and he didn’t notice that his hands were shaking until they reach up to rifle through the shaggy crop of hair he’s grown in his absence.  She takes an involuntary step back, and he curses himself for losing his cool.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  Look, I…”  He draws in a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes and attempting to regain composure.   _ One.  Two.  Three. _  “I’m sorry I disappeared.  I ain’t gonna apologize for ending Schoonover, but I’m sorry I been gone so long.”

“Quite an apology,” she scoffs, turning away from him to walk into the kitchen.  He starts to follow but stops when she pulls the funnel out of the coffee machine and loads it with a filter and beans.

“You gonna tell me who hurt you yet?”  He pulls a chair away from the dining table and plunks himself into it, leaning his forearms onto the table.

“A kid tried mugging me when I went to Queens for a story.  And, no, you don’t get to shoot him because he was a kid.  He was more afraid of me than I was of him.”  She pauses, both her speech and her action.  “Probably because I maced him.”  He grins, lets loose a little chuckle, and it sounds like she laughs a little too.  “He did have a mean right hook, though.  Caught me off-guard.”

“You still have that, uh, .380?”  She nods, pouring his cup when the coffee maker stops hissing.  “Good.  Good.”  He takes a sip of his coffee, puts it down, looks into it.  She watches him, always thinking, always vigilant.  Good.  She needs to be on her toes, city like New York.

“You never told me why you needed a place to stay tonight.  Though I’m not totally sure I want to know.”

“Safehouse got compromised.”  He drinks from his mug again, savoring the heavy dark roast on his tongue.  The caffeine never hyped him up too much, so he enjoyed drinking coffee any time of the day he could.  “I lost my tail a long way back, though, don’t worry.  Been jumping rooftops the last twenty blocks.”  Karen raises her eyebrows at this.

“Jumping rooftops?  Jesus, Frank, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“Well, technically speaking, I died in the harbor about six months ago, so death ain’t bothering me as much as it did before.”   _ And I’m already dead, aren’t I, Karen? _  He focuses on his coffee, keeping his mouth shut, because he’s positive she’s got the same thing on her mind.  “You sure you don’t want me going after that kid?  I could scare some sense into him, keep him out of trouble.”  This gets her to laugh a little, shaking her head.

“Like I said, I think I got that job done.”

A pregnant pause falls between them once more, her clearing her throat and sniffing and him scratching absently at his neck.  He tries to catch her eye, but she appears determined to look anywhere but him.  He stiffens, fighting the urge to reach across the table and take her hand.

“Karen.”

“Do I really need to ask you?” she chokes, and it’s only then that he realizes she’s sniffling, her eyes filling with tears.  “Where you disappeared off to for so long?  I saw you die once, the last thing I want to do is think about you dying again.”

“I’m dead to you, Karen, I don’t get--I don’t get why I should make a difference to you anymore.”

“You don’t  _ get it _ ?”  There’s fury in her voice now, outrage filtering through the spaces in her words.  He doesn’t remember how to flinch at being yelled at anymore, but he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t  _ something _ crumbling inside him at that moment.  “You don’t get that, after all the  _ bullshit _ you put us through--the bullshit you put  _ me _ through, that maybe I cared about you?”

_ Cared _ , he whispers to himself.   _ Past tense _ .

“And I know I shouldn’t have, I’m well fucking aware that I shouldn’t have cared about you, obviously, you’re the goddamn Punisher!  You go out every day and kill everyone who does something you disagree with.  And I agree with you, that some people shouldn’t get second chances!”  She inhales deeply, swiping at her nose with the back of her hand.  “But Frank, you can’t just...you can’t just waltz right back in here and expect to atone for all the shit you pulled on us.”

“I know.”  Her scowl deepens as much as it can, with the other half of her face swollen and bruised.  He chooses to push forth, allowing the shame in his gut to lead him on.  “Karen.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for all the shit I’ve put you through.  I think...I think you know I ain’t gonna stop, though.  What I’ve been doing.”

“I know you’re not,” she mutters, allowing a bitter smile.  “I don’t want you to stop.  I don’t want the scum out on the streets.  I don’t want the suffering to continue.”

“It won’t.”

“I just--”  She palms at her eyes, as if trying to push the tears back in.  “--I just can’t keep putting blind faith in the hope that I won’t find you broken in the gutters one day.”  He leans across the table then, gently grasping her wrists in his hands, pulling hers away from her face.  His grip lingers a moment too long, and he lets go, drawing his hands back into his lap.  “Six months, Frank.  Six months you were dead or dying or--or captured or--”

“I ain’t gonna die or get caught up,” he says, voice going soft.  She looks up at him then, her eyes big and blue and still as fierce as they ever were, but layered with fear, fragility.  “Karen.  I promise you.”

“You stay here.”  She gestures at her apartment, glancing up at him and then looking back down at the table.  “It’s going to take you a while to...to make things right, you know?”  She draws another shaky inhale, threading her hair behind her ears and holding it out of her face.  “But I can’t have this...you disappearing and then coming back from the dead.  You stay here.  This is your safehouse now.”

“Karen, I can’t put you in that kind of--”

“Too late.”  She shakes her head, bringing her eyes up to meet his.  “Besides--”  The beautiful and broken halves of her face meet in a jagged split down the middle, the bruises splashing across her flesh in brilliant violet blossoms.  She smiles.  “--the safest house for me has always been the one with you in it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys, thanks for reading! Just a quick one-shot to boost my creativity in between chapters of Ramble On. Hope you enjoyed, and please leave me any comments you think I could learn from :)


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